{"id":1686,"date":"2010-06-09T14:00:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T20:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2010-06-08T17:47:49","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T23:47:49","slug":"preserving-the-flame-after-40-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2010\/06\/09\/preserving-the-flame-after-40-years\/","title":{"rendered":"preserving the flame after 40 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>\"Sweethearts\"Al and Tipper Gore recently decided that 40 years\u00a0is enough.\u00a0\u00a0 Are there broader social implications of this story for other long term couples?\u00a0 The\u00a0Monterey County Herald<\/a>\u00a0called upon the expertise of sociologists to answer this question.<\/p>\n

It makes us frightened for our parents, our friends, ourselves. “[The Gores]\u00a0were seen as this perfect couple, that’s why we’re traumatized,” says Terri Orbuch, a marriage therapist and sociology professor at the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n

“This is supposed to be one of the easiest and happiest periods of marriage … the reward for a job well done,” says Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins University sociology professor who studies families.<\/p>\n

But the other fact is that we’ve never before faced empty-nest periods that could easily extend for 20 or 30 years. “The institution of marriage wasn’t designed for that. It was designed to help us raise kids and put food on the table,” says Cherlin. “It may just be that it’s a difficult task for married couples to keep a happy life going for decades.”<\/p>\n

“It’s more threatening to us if we see a couple who we thought were happy just drift apart,” Cherlin says. “If even well-behaved people get divorced after 40 years, then some of us will worry about what our own marriages will be like later in life.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How do you keep the flame going after 40 years?<\/p>\n

To really work, long-term relationships need “regular attention, regular affirmation on a daily basis,” says Orbuch, who recently completed a 20-year study of marriage for the National Institutes of Health. She wonders whether Al Gore was gone too much \u2014 out saving the world \u2014 to save his marriage. (Then again, maybe it was Tipper who was inattentive?)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al and Tipper Gore recently decided that 40 years\u00a0is enough.\u00a0\u00a0 Are there broader social implications of this story for other long term couples?\u00a0 The\u00a0Monterey County Herald\u00a0called upon the expertise of sociologists to answer this question. It makes us frightened for our parents, our friends, ourselves. “[The Gores]\u00a0were seen as this perfect couple, that’s why we’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[211,122,320,99],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-aging","tag-lifecourse","tag-marriage","tag-relationships"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1691,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}